


Dissonance

by n_a_feathers



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, mentioned Leonard Snart and Mick Rory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 18:44:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n_a_feathers/pseuds/n_a_feathers
Summary: Cisco remembers when everyone else forgets.
Set after Flash's Flash Back and Legend's Last Refuge.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Last season when Cisco was just coming into his powers, I wondered what it would be like if he was able to notice the effects of the temporary timeline alterations that were going on in Legends of Tomorrow. I kind of liked the idea of him being able to see through changes to the timeline on the fly and remember erased continuities, kind of like Psycho-Pirate, and so I wrote this.

Cisco was tinkering with the tachyon accelerator in the cortex, a bag of lollypops at his disposal and not a care in the world. (That was a big fat lie but one he was sticking to for now). Barry was straddling one of the wheelie chairs at his side, watching and chatting, equally dedicated to their charade of normality and occasionally handing him the tools he needed.

 

It was a chilled out weekend afternoon if you discounted the impending threat of Zoom punching an interdimensional hole through space (and possibly time) and coming to get them. Sure, all the breaches were currently closed but Barry had started dropping hints to a plan he obviously thought was pure genius but which Cisco privately considered to be suicide. The boy could get cray-cray when it came to justice and doing the right thing.

 

Hartley had dropped by for a moment to talk to Caitlin about something or other, and Cisco couldn’t help stealing glances at him when he knew his attention was elsewhere, mentally comparing the man in front of him now to the supervillain he’d vibed after Barry’s return from the past with time wraith in tow. It was a little hard to imagine the Hartley from their timeline – bright, happy, at peace with himself – as the sullen, caped Pied Piper of his visions. It was amazing what a little innocent tinkering in the past could accomplish. Barry always talked about how going back and changing things usually ended up with something even worse happening but Cisco thought his most recent voyage had turned out okay. Barry had got what he needed to know about tachyon technology and Hartley’s life sucked a little less. Yay.

 

“Dude, you have to stop staring. Your crush is way obvious.”

 

Cisco began to sputter out a denial – almost losing his lollypop in the effort – before he noticed the mischievous look on Barry’s face. He gave up and whacked him on the shoulder instead. “You dick.”

 

Barry just grinned back at him. "You remember how he was before this, don’t you? I mean, the one from the old timeline."

 

"Yeah,” Cisco admitted. “I got a vibe off him not long after you got back. You remember, too?” Barry nodded. “It's just so weird. Like, the mental dissonance is too much.”

 

Barry grew animated. “Tell me about it. Changes to the timeline just do my head in.” How was it his life that discussing the cons of timeline manipulation was an ordinary conversation? “At least you get all the new memories too. Dick Hartley was all I’d ever known before he was suddenly saving me from a time wraith and picking my butt up off the floor.”

 

“I bet you got the shock of your life. You know, though,” Cisco pointed the soldering iron he was currently using in Barry’s direction, “if you keep fiddling with the time stream, we could have Captain Cold on our side in no time. Imagine that. He could be like... Iceman? No, wait, I can do better than that. I've got it! Citizen Cold.”

 

Barry’s brow screwed up but his lopsided grin remained as he twirled a screwdriver between his fingers, accelerating it bit by bit until it became a blur. Show off. “Who?”

 

“Ha ha. Good joke.” Cisco went back to repairing the motherboard in front of him. “But seriously, work your magic.” He waggled the fingers of his free hand. Magic jazz hand. “Let’s get the Snarts on board.”

 

It was then that Cisco realised Barry had turned to look straight at him, the smile now gone. “I’m not joking. Who is that? Someone from Star City?”

 

Cisco abandoned his tinkering and gave Barry his full attention too. He’d thought Barry was playing at first, but obviously not. Barry had no poker face whatsoever. This was real and it was wigging him out a bit. “Barry, this isn’t funny. Leonard Snart, Mick Rory, Lisa Snart? The Rogues? You know, the dastardly villains we all love to hate?”

 

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

 

“You’re starting to freak me out, dude.” He threw his head back and called out, “Yo! Caitlin!” The woman in question looked in his direction with a disgruntled expression. “Who kidnapped you first?”

 

Her brow scrunched up in confusion. That was becoming a common occurrence today and Cisco wasn’t happy about it. “I beg your pardon?”

 

“The first time you were kidnapped: who did the deed?”

 

“What do you mean first?” She was giving him that look. The one she gave him when he went a little too deep into sci-fi lore. The _I will never understand you but I love and accept you despite your idiosyncrasies_. At least, that’s how he liked to interpret the look. More likely it was something along the lines of _what did I do wrong in life to deserve this?_ Hartley was standing next to her, just looking smugly amused. “I’ve only been kidnapped once. By Grodd, the other week. You know that.”

 

Cisco could feel his jaw hanging open. His mother had always told him it was impolite but it felt like the appropriate reaction in this circumstance. “But what about Captain Cold and Heatwave?”

 

“Who?”

 

What was happening? Was he being filmed? Was Ashton Kutcher going to jump out from behind Barry’s suit in a moment yelling, “you just got punk’d!”? Or whatever the topical version of that was now? This had to be some kind of joke.

 

“Leonard Snart and Mick Rory.” Waving his arms around frantically in his best imitation of an octopus seemed like a legit way of getting his meaning across. “Career criminals. Stole my guns and use them to knock over ATMs.”

 

“You mean the cold and heat guns?” She was looking at him like _he_ was the crazy one. “They’re in the store room. You know that, we did inventory just the other week.”

 

And now that he thought about it, he did know that. Could remember doing the inventory, grudgingly at first but getting more engrossed as they went along, finding completed and partially finished projects he’d mostly forgotten about. He’d spent more time playing than doing the actual work.

 

And the heat and cold guns _had_ been there. Half of his mind – the part that had adapted to whatever altered timeline he was privy to at the moment - was telling him they’d always been there, that they’d never been stolen.  

 

But he could also picture, plain as day, Snart and Rory firing at Barry as he raced around them in an empty downtown. Could remember the shake in his hands as he faced off against Cold himself armed only with a pimped out vacuum cleaner for protection, and the swell of pleasure he tried to not let show when Lisa had beamed at the name he’d given her.

 

Something was happening. Something big. It had to be. That was the only explanation for why he still remembered but no one else did. He could see through the vibrations of the universe, through the changes to the timeline. It was kind of a sucky power.

 

Cisco made his way quickly to a computer terminal and pulled up a master database, typed in Leonard Snart. The (much shorter than it should be, thanks Barry) criminal record he’d expected to see pop up didn’t, instead he got a series of newspapers from 1972 about a kidnapping from a local hospital. Baby Leonard Snart - only a few days old – had been taken from the maternity ward and never seen again.

 

Heatwave next. Again, no police records. Just newspaper articles about his disappearance in 1990 after his house burnt down and killed both of his parents.

 

Well, that was suspicious. Both Snart and Rory being whisked away, never to be seen again. Some higher power was at work here, serving some purpose Cisco could only guess at.

 

His powers must be getting stronger. Perhaps the alterations Barry had made to the time line had caused their evolution to accelerate. He was obviously still vibing the big events, but once vibed the old timeline was sneaking into and melding with the current one, like two images superimposed over each other. That was the only way he could find to explain this turn of events.

 

Through the rest of the day he quizzed Barry and Caitlin relentlessly, trying to weave together the threads of this mystery to make some sense of it. Professor Stein had disappeared too, Jax along with him. It was the same as Cold, they’d just vanished from the maternity ward and had never been found. Next was a missing teenaged Sara Lance. He wondered how that would have affected Oliver’s timeline but ultimately decided to spare himself the headache of looking into that mess.

 

He was no closer to working out what it all meant though. The Snarts and Rory obviously had a connection but how did the rest of them fit in? Professor Stein might have crossed paths with Sara on one of their team ups but the Rogues definitely hadn’t been in contact with her as far as he knew.  Cisco couldn’t think what they could all possibly be involved in that would have pulled them out of the time stream simultaneously.

 

For a few days he was desperate to find an answer to this problem. If he was the only one that realised something was wrong, then obviously he had to fix it, right? With great power comes great responsibility and all that. Except in his case, it was more like great knowledge than great power, which was a problem in itself. Because without real power, there was nothing he could do. It wasn’t like he was a speedster who could travel back in time and change things. No. His stupid power was being able to see something was wrong after it had already happened and not being able to do a damn thing about it. He’d even trifled with the idea of trying to recreate the time sphere Eobard had had them make for him but for the good of the world had decided against it. He’d seen enough time travel movies to know the damage someone untrained like himself could do.

 

So he just let it go.

 

A part of his brain kept whispering constantly that maybe he should be doing something about the situation, but what _could_ he do? He hadn’t the slightest clue what had caused all these people to disappear from the timeline and as none of them existed anymore, he couldn’t exactly ask them about it either. Anyone who might have been able to give him some answers had had any memories of the disappeared heroes and villains erased. He felt like the last surviving member of an alien race, protecting the knowledge of his people because without him, it was gone. Like Superman. Or the Doctor.

 

So every day that followed he greeted Barry with the same question: “Remember Cold and Heatwave yet?”

 

And for about a week he got the same amused smile and a prompt _nope_ and then they’d go on with their day as per usual.

 

But one day he asked about Cold and Heatwave and Barry’s brow scrunched up in annoyance. He replied, “I _wish_ I could forget them.”

 

And that’s when Cisco knew that whatever had been going on was over. He hopped onto one of the computers and pulled up the thieves’ files, Lisa’s as well for good measure. All back to normal; neither Snart nor Rory had ever been kidnapped and Lisa had been born when she was supposed to be. Further investigation placed Professor Stein, Jax and Sara exactly where he expected them to be too.

 

All was right with the timeline once again, no one else was any the wiser and he hadn’t had to lift a single finger.

 

Cisco counted that as a win.

 

He’d ask them about it the next time he saw them.

 


End file.
